


A Glimpse of the Star That Guides Me Home

by nahul



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi is an astronaut, Akaashi names a star after Bokuto, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Bokuto Koutarou is a Star, Bokuto is a star, Chapter 331 inspired, Future Fic, Gen, I'm never gonna forget Akaashi calling Bokuto a star and I won't let you forget it either, M/M, Space explorer Akaashi, Stars, Well a space explorer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 14:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahul/pseuds/nahul
Summary: It's on the loneliest nights that Akaashi finds comfort in locating the brightest star in the galaxy.





	A Glimpse of the Star That Guides Me Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yahababie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahababie/gifts).



> i can't tag on phones AT ALL so I'll add additional tags later. Been going through a long writer's block so I'm kinda proud of this?

It’s his first night back on Earth in so long, and yet he can’t seem to find comfort in his bed. In the familiar duvets that he wraps around himself, in the posters hanging from his childhood room, in the small objects scattered across the room that scream ‘Akaashi Keiji’ and paint his room in innocuous colours of his childhood. He can’t seem to find comfort in anything at all, even surrounded by so much evidence that he’s home; where the heart is.

It’s as though he’s been jolted around so frequently that his definition of home has gotten lost somewhere between here and the map of the stars that lies above him now. The section of his heart that holds the meaning of home has been hollowed out, cleared out, and now he can’t find comfort within the sheets of his own bed once more. 

He places a hand to his chest, mind reeling with thoughts revolving around nothing and everything all at once.

And so, he slips out of the cocoon of duvets and pads over to the windowsill. The stars are hiding tonight, under layers of thickened cloud, and he wonders halfheartedly whether that’s the reason behind the sleeplessness that buzzes through every bone in his body. 

Halfheartedly, he presses his forehead against the cooler pane of glass, his mind not stumbling in reeling back to the times when he was younger. When he used to curl up in the windowsill and watch the stars as a kid whenever he couldn’t sleep, finding some sort of placid tranquility in the boundless night’s sky, the warmth of a thousand twinkly stars beaming down as though they were waiting for him.

How things have changed since then.

And he doesn’t wanna admit it, not really, but he wishes he were young again. Wishes he could crawl into his blankets with the certainty that the house he lives in is a place he can call ‘ _ home _ ’; wishes he could run up to his mother with stars in his eyes and declare that he was going to travel across space when he was older; wishes he could trace his finger across the windowpane and feel that wanderlust that would only ever be satisfied by being among the celestial sights themselves. There’s a reluctance to admitting it, but deep down, he doesn’t want to be here anymore.

Not in that existential way. No. 

There’s just an emptiness hanging in his soul. The sort of emptiness that can’t really be resolved by hugs and companions and dreams being fulfilled; it’s an empty scar that cuts deep into his ribs. Threatens to cut right into his lungs sometimes. A sort of emptiness that began to curl inside him the minute he named the star.

Climbing onto the windowsill, he draws his knees up tightly against his body and allows a breath of a sigh to exit him as his mind trails back. 

To an outsider, his life is a success. An indelible success; the first man to travel across the universe. Hell, he’d discovered the brightest star within the entire universe, and  _ named  _ it. What reason had he to dwell on negativity when he had such undivided, unbridled and unadulterated adoration aimed at him all the time? 

Yet, somewhere, he feels that shame within him bleed out, starting from his heart and infecting every limb of his body until the numbness that shame brings washes over him like a tidal wave of guilt and he feels so very lonely.

Despondency that took root in his heart long ago flowers and blooms, the stem curling its way around his ribcage. Chokes him of air. He can’t breathe, really, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t been able to breathe properly in a while. 

Puts it down to travelling across the entire galaxy. Hide the problem, bury it further, don’t let anyone make the connections. 

A lone star manages to break through the oppressive cloud that blocks all other stars. Twinkles along with the moon; accompanies it in the caliginous black of the early morning. A bright star - the brightest star, he briefly notes, doesn’t let the breath that’s caught in his throat escape as his heart hammers in his chest.

The star’s presence is comforting, somewhat. A bright star, the sort that he’d rely on to guide him home. Leaning back against his wall again, his mind slips through the barrier of thoughts he’s trying to bury in the brief lapse of comfort.

It’s a false sense of security. The sort that lures him in every time, and he recalls.

Recalls a part of his life that feels like an entire lifetime ago; a thousand and a few years ago, even though logically it can’t be that long ago. But wow, there’s an aching in his bones that whispers otherwise; tells him he’s a thousand and one years old and that he’s too old for the guilt that washes over him and reminds him again and again that he’s  _ human  _ \- that he’s  _ here  _ and he’s  _ existing. _

Recalls the kind voice belonging to Bokuto Koutarou. Excitement incarnate, the happiness he dragged around with him. 

Recalls his first meeting with Bokuto. The dazzling smile he offered him, the warmth of his hand and the constant positivity that rolled off his tongue. The way he stumbled over Akaashi’s name at first, frequently getting it wrong yet in an innocuous way. Pure and truthful and honest in all matters.

Akaashi clenches his fist as he remembers their first meeting, the memory coming to him as easy as though it were yesterday, though time has stretched too far for him to reach out to yesterday and bring them memories to life once more. He’s travelled across space yet hasn’t managed to travel through time even once.

If he could, he’d find himself back here. Living in this memory.

Bokuto saying, “Akashi!” and Akaashi lacksadasically correcting him without a second thought, falling into that comfortable aura that Bokuto radiated wherever he went. Openness and sunshine rolling out into monotonous cracks in the sky and painting them in a million shades of blues.

Akaashi still remembers, as though it were yesterday, when Bokuto looked at Akaashi as though he’d just offered him a million dollars, and said, “Whoa, you were the chosen one? You’re going to go to space?”

A ghost of a smile crosses his lips even now as he remembers it, that event that happened so long ago (two  million? years ago). Exhilaration had emanated from every fibre in his body; no jealousy had dared to betray the zealousness he exhibited in his movements, his tone, as he pulled Akaashi into a hug and told him he’d be the best explorer the galaxy had ever seen.

As they’d pulled away, Bokuto still held that happy grin on his features as he spoke. “But y’know, you’ve gotta name something after me, y’know?”

And at the time, Akaashi had just laughed it off, smiled and said, “Of course, Bokuto-san.”

And, as such, it’d become something of a joke between the two. That Akaashi was going to travel across the universe for Bokuto. Or something of that sort. 

Looking back, it hurts. Sends an electric shock of anguish riveting through his bones at the memory, at the realisation that he would. He’d cross oceans and mountains and galaxies and leap through time if it offered him that sense of home that seemed to get lost on that one day. 

The day where he’d never felt further away from home; his sense of self had been torn from his body. Everything and nothing crashed down on him at once when the words tumbled from Bokuto’s lips. Each word a death sentence in more ways than one. More ways than he could count at all.

And Akaashi knows that it takes more than mere words to shatter a universe, but within that moment, Akaashi felt every single foundation of his entire universe collapse beneath his feet. 

Just three syllables. Two words. A subject and a noun. 

When you break it down, it doesn’t take much, really, to have a recipe for devastation. Though perhaps in retrospect, that is all merely due to him getting to close. Opening his heart up to things that don’t last. Reflecting on Akaashi’s own faults doesn’t make the reality any more harsh, though. Doesn’t make the fallout any more easy to deal with it as Akaashi stands in the debris; a whirling path of ruination twisting all around him.

It’s hard. Still. Really. To come to terms with it, though that time has passed and there’s so much more he still needs to grasp onto now. 

It’s hard though, to come to terms with the words that fell from his mouth even now. 

“I’m dying.”

Words. Words that take form of emotions. Akaashi had heard so many emotions conveyed through Bokuto’s words, the calmness of a dulcet sunrise, the glisten of an early morning’s sun, the lazy and languid yet bouncy tone of a summery afternoon. He’d heard every single definition of a star, of the sun itself, mirrored within the words that Bokuto spoke.

But never once had he heard the defeat of the sun. Heard it cowering behind clouds and rolling hills, surrendering to relentless and pitiful showers or thunder and lightning. Never once had he thought that Bokuto Koutarou would clamber behind mountains for protection from the envious moon, arisen and ready to strike him with a curse that can only come from one who lives in a world of darkness.

Never once had he even assumed that the brightest star he’d ever encountered in all his years of research would merely wink out of existence like that. Collapse in on itself without a large explosion, without a big procession. Just a sickness that engulfed him in the space of a few months.

Shaking his head, he tries to rid his mind of the thoughts. The memories that take form in the shape of the darkness that swirls around his mind, he lets his eyes flit once more to the window. To the lone star that shines out, and he can picture the smile it wears as though he were up close to it. Can feel the warmth of the hug it’d give it if it were personified. 

Though perhaps he’s just projecting. Projecting Bokuto’s qualities onto his namesake that glistens somewhere a thousand-and-something miles between him. Glistens somewhere in the galaxies, an unknown location that Akaashi reckons might as well be dubbed ‘Home’ for all he knows.

Because though his term of home is ambiguous on the best of days, he feels that there’s one definitive term that he can dub ‘home’ without feeling incorrect. Without even the slightest shadow of a doubt. 

Though his emotions feel like a spilled bucket, brimming with melancholic masmia that bleeds into blissfulness and consumes euphoria as though it were something toxic to its existence. Though his definition of home is no longer a living, breathing thing, he still will unfalteringly call out to it as though it were.

He will still, without fail, call out to one Bokuto Koutarou as his ‘home’. 

For home is always somewhere where he’s welcome. It’s warm hugs and even warmer smiles, and delineating details of explorations over maps and cups of tea and in between jokes. Home is somewhere within bold laughter and even bolder calls of “Akashi!” followed by a meek, “It’s Akaashi, Bokuto-san.”

Home is always somewhere hidden between the corners of a smile. Even if that somewhere is hidden a million and one light years away, burrowed somewhere deep in the galaxy only to act as a bright star at times when he couldn’t sleep. In sleepless nights, a home is a place he can look up to and feel a fulfilling sense of hope flood through him.

For Bokuto Koutarou was a bright star, if Akaashi Keiji ever knew one. As his gaze flutters up to the lone star that twinkles brightly, he wonders whether it’ll ever manage to burn as brightly as its namesake did.

**Author's Note:**

> Hehe.
> 
> Come scream at/with me on twitter !! I'm kiyoomimi!!


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